Gilligan Myth

My children enjoy watching Mythbusters and Gilligan's Island, so it's quite natural for them to have come up with a Gilligan's Island myth to test.  Below is what Tiana wrote about it:

Anyone who's seen Gilligan's Island should know this myth.  Can you really charge batteries with salt water, bobby pins, pennies, wire, and cocounts?  Well today my sister Alina and my brother Daniel decided to try it out!  This was really fun to do.  so go ahead and do it yourself!

All you need is:

Bobby Pins

 Wire

 Salt (and water)

 Pennies

 After you get everything together put the salt into bowls (or coconuts!)

Then you want to place the wire under the bobby pin, but make sure the wire is on top of the penny.

Then we used scotch tape to hold the wire on the battery. Be sure and tape the wire on both the top and the bottom of the battery.

 Next take chop sticks (or anything else you want) and stir the salt water. Keep stirring for awhile

If you want to know if it really works, here's a spoiler (but those of you who plan to do this yourself don't look until after you do it!) Myth Confirmed. In other words, it really works!


Have a great rest of your day everyone!

Lego Games and Teamwork

The sound coming from the other room was so enjoyable! I heard lots of silliness and giggling. When I went to see what the source of all the joyful sounds, I discovered my three youngest children sitting at the kitchen table playing a game I hadn’t seen before.

As I pressed in to find out what they were doing I discovered that they were playing a LEGO game. Daniel, my 9-year-old, had created three game boards with the LEGOs. The first had a volcano on it, the second an island and the third was a robot castle. The point of each game is to collect the fire crown from the top of the volcano, the emerald staff from the robot castle and the water sword from the island by spinning a wheel made out of Legos. This is done by moving the little peg-styled man the number of spaces indicated by the spinning wheel through various obstacles, pick up the item and bring it back to their original spot.

As I continued to listen I learned that Daniel came up with the game ideas and built the game boards. He invited his sisters, Tiana (14) and Alina (12) to play with him and they, over a period of time, helped him improve this and tweak that until they came up with the game I was seeing. I was so blessed by their ability to work and play together in a productive and enjoyable manner!

A few days later Alina and Daniel wrote up directions for the Volcano version of the game. Alina typed as they both brainstormed on how to word the instructions. When the instructions were done and printed out I sat and played all three games with Daniel.

I was so impressed with how much fun the games were to play! We came up with some modifications to their game directions and they are in the process of editing them.

In the meantime, Daniel is adding a 4th part to his game which involves a cave. As it turns out he has decided to combine all three games into one big game and will be adding the fourth, the cave, when it is done.

The creating and game playing and teamwork continues!

Tiana's Snood

Written by Tiana:


I crocheted a snood. For those of you who don't know what a 'snood' is, it's just another word for hair net. Snood's were very popular in the 1940's. I crocheted this one today with my own pattern that I made up while I was making it (just about everything I crochet it made that way!). One of my favorite things to do is crochet while listening to either music or an audio book. I was able to make this in just a few hours. I think it turned out pretty good!

Tiana's Photography and Collections

Written by Tiana:

I want to show you all the stuff I found when my mom and I went out garage selling. Just so you know, there are a lot of pictures!

I got the entire Anne of Green Gables series!

This Luggage set my mom bought for me. It's so cute!

I've been needing a book bag for so long, and now I have this one! I love how it has horses on it!

I got this vintage suitcase for only a couple a dollars. I love anything vintage.

Here's the inside. The top flips down for more storage.

I've been looking at shirts similar to this one at Fred Meyer but they were always so expensive, so I was so happy when I found this shirt for one dollar!

I love these shoes!

I love these ones as well!

I found this soft yarn and had to buy it! I think it will make a great scarf cowl.

This is all of my stuff together!